Class of 2021 Merit Scholarships

Should we have submitted an extracurricular resume? I didn’t because they didn’t ask for it, but now I’m starting to worry. Would the committee review it if I sent it in or are the scholarships only based on the information they asked for?

@panic2017 it is hard to say. My DD was not sure about that, but she mailed her resume to school anyway. We are not so sure about if it carries any weight or not.

@panic2017 no resume was needed for consideration of merit scholarships.

My son did not submit any resume too. Other than scores and self reported GPA, he only did the required essays for scholarship. It does not look like a requirement.

My son was accepted to Swanson Eng. about a month ago. Received a scholarship letter yesterday - $15,000/yr. No offer to apply to anything else. We did not send resume or anything extra. he has a 35 ACT and is in the top 1% of his class but there is no “official” ranking. Congrats to you D @dadofd - that’s pretty awesome!

Hello all! We do not require a resume for scholarship consideration - no need to send one!

Best of luck,
A Pitt Admissions Staffer

Out of curiousity, has anyone been offered any money with a 33 ACT yet?

DD has 34ACT, top 5% of class of 585. 4.0-UW/4.3-W, OOS. 9 APs. She received 10k/yr merit and no Chancellor’s Scholarship invite. The Selection Committee appears to have super high cut-off for the Chancellor’s this year.

I am not sure what selection committee is looking. 35 ACT, 4.0/4.6+W, IB, leadership no chancellor’s and only 15K. I guess they have to really like the short essays.

Regarding the frustration with 10 or 15K OOS scholarships, I think Pitt forgets that even with 15K OOS scholarship, Pitt’s net tuition would still be substantially more than many students’ instate flagship universities. (I wonder if they think all states have 18K in-state tuition like Pitt and Penn State,) For example, my son’s 15K OOS scholarship would actually cost us 5K a year over in-state UMD, even before any UMD merit scholarships are announced in March.

@engineering2015 , with respect - seriously. But why would they care?

Hello @oldbrookie Sorry, I sincerely didn’t mean to offend. I believe you’re right. I just sense a lot of disappointment out there this year and I tried to give the perspective of someone with a limited budget from Maryland, home to an excellent flagship university, but with an eye toward other possibilities if the finances allow. To be clear, our family has had nothing but positive experiences with Pitt.

I just had naively hoped that if Pitt really wanted someone to choose Pitt instead of their excellent home flagship university, they would try to match the student’s in-state tuition, not Pitt’s in-state tuition. Obviously, I was wrong, as a 15K OOS scholarship actually would cost us a lot of money over in-state UMD, not save it. Again, sorry, I didn’t mean to offend. Good luck to all.

@Engineering713 Maybe (hopefully) Pitt is planning to save some of their aid funds this year for need-based aid for instate students who can’t otherwise afford to attend Pitt, rather than giving higher merit awards to out of state students who may or may not need it or who may have lower cost options in their own states.

Hey, @Engineering713, I think you misinterpreted my post - no offense here! Yeah, there is a lot of disappointment with the Pitt scholarships this year. Count us in.

Just chatting. Honestly - I also didn’t mean to offend!

Once all merit awards are in, if you have a merit award from Pitt but a net lower COA from a like-institute - Pitt does have an appeal process where they may adjust. They may choose not to - but it’s an opportunity.

Based on what people are saying about merit compared to last year I just think the ‘yield’ on all those full tuition offers last year was higher than expected and they had to hold back somewhat this year. It would be interesting to know what the yield is on those full tuition scholarship offers from year to year.

So when should we know about chancellors scholarships? March? Likely only attending if I get that

@shooting4stars --it looks like from last year interviews for that don’t even start until Feb/March and then they are notified within the weeks afterwards.

Good luck!

Does Pitt consider only ACT for scholarships? Everyone seems to only report their ACT scores. What if they have only SAT scores or better SAT scores than ACT score.

@AllenTx15 --the Pitt rep here says frequently that they are a “test friendly” school and accept and consider all. If you have a better SAT score then definitely go with that. They superscore the SAT so that’s even more of a reason.